Old Chinese Phonology

(4,463 words)

Article Table of Contents

1. Background

Broadly speaking, Old Chinese phonology (Shànggǔyīn 上古音) is the sound system of Old Chinese, the language of the early first millennium BCE that underlies the rhymes (=rimes) of the Shījīng 詩經 (the BookofOdes) and the system of phonetic elements in the early Chinese script. An early stage of this language can be assumed to be the ancestor of all later attested forms of Chinese.

Scientific investigations into the phonology of Old Chinese began in China as early as the Sòng period (960–1279),…